Find Your Adventure

Conservation

March 22, 2011

National Geographic Explorer David de Rothschild pictured aboard the Plastiki, a boat made of post-consumer plastic bottles which embarked on a voyage from San Francisco to Sydney one year ago yesterday. The expedition made de Rothschild one of our 2010 Adventurers of the Year.

Op-ed by David de Rothschild; Photograph courtesy of Adventure Ecology

If you type the phrase "how long can you last without" into Google, given the thousands of preemptive suggestions to fire back to complete the phrase, it might surprise you that "water" is the first word to bubble up and claim top spot. Scan the first few pages of the 159,000,000 search results and you’re presented with a collection of near identical survival websites focused on tips needed to keep your personal water tank from dipping dipping into the red.

But amid all the reams of cut-and-paste references, one particular tip caught my eye. It was a sentence that could easily win the award for most obvious statement of 2011: "The best method to survive without water is not to be placed in that situation in the first place."

It's been a fortunate few days. We arrived in Kinshasa on Monday exhausted from 36 hours of transit and found the Congo just as hot as we left it two years ago. On Tuesday morning, we met with Dr. Teresa Hart, a 30-year veteran of conservation in the DRC. Teresa first came to the country as a Peace Corp volunteer in 1974. She’s now in her tenth year studying bonobos, an ape found only in the DRC, in a 25,000-square mile block of forest known as TL2. The region's an elephant sanctuary on paper but animals are disappearing there faster than ever.

December 16, 2010

We first met kayaker and filmmaker Trip Jennings after his expedition to find unrun rivers in Papua New Guinea made him a 2007 Adventurer of the Year. Since then, he has traveled the world over, from Tibet to Brazil, making adventure films about rivers in peril. His latest project, though, involves the grandest of terrestrial creatures—elephants. To follow up on his National Geogoraphic Channel-funded expedition last year, Jennings and his team will continue their work to combat elephant poaching in January 2011. Here, learn about a local event to support the cause.

The Elephant Ivory Project team got some homegrown support last Friday at Go Wild: A Night of Fashion + Celebration to Save Elephants. Portland’s fashion community joined forces with conservation groups and advocates to organize a wild couture fashion show featuring local, eco designers in an effort to save wild African elephants from the illegal ivory trade.

National Geographic Explorers Andy Maser and Trip Jennings of EP Films are embarking in January on a forensic biology expedition to the remote jungle of the Democratic Republic of Congo to help the Center for Conservation Biology complete their elephant DNA map of Africa. The goal: send resources to poaching hot spots and save wild elephants from the illegal ivory trade and capture provocative media to bring this important issue home.

"To make people care, you've got to give them a way to engage on a local level and this fashion show accomplished just that—local designers, models and members of the community came out in full force to support this project. It makes you realize that this isn't just about saving elephants, this is about building dynamic, conscious, and empowered communities here in Portland, in Congo and across the globe," said Emily Nuchols of Under Solen Media, a Portland-based firm that organized the event.

Poachers are killing elephants for their ivory at a rate of 10 percent per year—that means that in just a few years, wild elephant populations may not exist anymore.

“It’s shocking to realize that on average 105 elephants are killed by poachers every single day, but it’s not hopeless. Twenty years ago, with a global upwelling of support, the ivory trade was stopped—nearly overnight. We can do that again. And this event brought us one step closer to doing so," Trip Jennings of EP Films said. "Thanks to everyone who made this night a success.”

June 02, 2010

Connecting the Gems is a new project conceived by Deia Schlosberg and Gregg Treinish, who were Adventurers of the Year in 2008 for their remarkable trans-Andes traverse. Here Gregg Treinish shares details about their upcoming 450-mile hike through Lewis and Clark's Rockies.

The Northern Rockies of the United States are one of the most important and intact ecosystems found today in the world’s temperate zone. The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness in central Idaho are large, important landscapes that still fit the descriptions of Lewis and Clark, who came through the area more than 200 years ago. Rich wildlife populations and vast areas of untouched wilderness still reign here. Unfortunately, these areas are increasingly at risk of becoming isolated islands of disjunct habitat.

March 22, 2010

Just in time for World Water Day (today) and after nearly four years of development, eco-adventurer David de Rothschild has launched his most ambitious expedition yet. The Plastiki, an innovative catamaran made from 12,000 post-consumer plastic bottles,set sail on Saturday for a 100-day voyage from San Francisco to Sydney. Their mission is to witness some of the most devastating waste accumulation on our planet, including the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch. According to his twitter feed, David and the crew had eggs for breakfast on their first morning at sea. (Read our previous coverage and see the NG Plastiki site.)

Taking inspiration from Thor Heyerdal's 1947 Kon-tiki expedition, the Plastiki's crew includes of David
de Rothschild, accomplished skipper Jo Royle, and Olav Heyerdahl, Thor's grandson. Check back for updates here, or go to http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/plastiki/.

March 19, 2010

Follow adventurer Andrew Skurka as he skis, hikes, and rafts 4,720
miles through eight national parks, two major mountain ranges, and some
of North America's wildest rivers in Alaska and the Yukon from March to October. Read his blog updates here.

Staying in Control - Posted March 18 in Buckland, Alaska

It was -25° F when I started this trip on Sunday. It warmed up some, to -15°, but it was offset (and then some) by the 10 MPH crosswind from the west. Monday wasn't much better -- it was -20° F in the morning and -10 deg F mid-day. The weather finally broke that night: Tuesday morning it was a balmy 0°, though that low pressure center was being ushered in by a 25 MPH southeast wind, just in time for an exposed 12-mile southbound ice crossing.

The bitter temperatures (and my newfound respect for polar travelers who contend with even colder temperatures) was certainly the headline for my first four days, but there is a valuable lesson here: The importance of "staying in control" in such conditions (wording courtesy of Roman Dial). The cold has a way of causing, accelerating, punishing one for—and preventing the reversal of—mistakes and oversights.

March 16, 2010

More than 1,000 explorers from around the globe will converge in New York City for the 106th Explorers' Club Annual Dinner on Saturday at the Waldorf=Astoria (watch a video from last year's event). While sharing a Versailles-styled ballroom with the world’s best polar explorers, bushwhacking biologists, and dusty archaeologists—some in native dress—might sound like a throwback to a bygone era, this year’s theme is decidedly modern: space. The evening's program even includes superstars on an intergalactic level, such as physicist Stephen Hawking and planetary scientist Steve Squyres. According to club president Lorie Karnath (pictured below), we are entering a new Age of Exploration, one baring likeness to sailing’s uncharted days and early polar expeditions. Here Karnath fills us in on the future of space tourism, manned missions, planetary colonization, and space-age exploration.—By Mary Anne Potts

Why is this a new Age of Exploration?There was a time in history known as the Age of Exploration, starting in the 15th century, when explorers and adventurers really did not know where they were going, what to expect, or what they would find. That’s the same feeling we have about space. Space is definitely going to become a more important place for us to learn about as quickly as possible.

March 12, 2010

You’d expect someone who has spent most of her life at or below sea level to sweat a little harder hiking up 19,340-foot Kilimanjaro on the Summit on the Summit climb last January. Not so for Alexandra Cousteau, granddaughter of Jacques, lifelong water advocate, and a National Geographic emerging explorer. While she can’t explain why altitude sickness didn’t affect her on Africa’s tallest peak, she can shed light on why we all are connected to the climbers' cause, the global clean water crisis. Here Cousteau explains the issues surrounding water scarcity worldwide, her upcoming Blue Legacy expedition, and what you can do to help out.

You grew up diving the planet’s great oceans and are now a leading advocate to help improve water issues worldwide. Did you feel a little like a fish out of water climbing the world’s tallest freestanding mountain?That was definitely the first time I had scaled a mountain of that size. It was challenging to trek five to seven hours every day at altitude. The weather was not cooperating very well. We had fog, rain, hail, and snow. But I was fortunate in that I didn’t experience any physical ailments at all.

March 11, 2010

In January, a team of actors, musicians, and National Geographic explorers—Jimmy Chin and Alexandra Cousteau—set out to climb Africa’s tallest peak, 19,340-foot Kilimanjaro, to raise awareness about the global clean water crisis. (Read more from Chin and Cousteau in interviews we will post later today.)

According to the United Nations' Millennium Water for Life initiative, 18 percent of the world’s population doesn’t have access to safe drinking water and 42 percent doesn’t have access to sanitation, resulting in deadly waterborne diseases.

“Mountains are like the great equalizer. It doesn’t matter who anyone is or what they do,” says big-wall climber and photographer Chin, referring to the challenge posed to his fellow hikers, actors Emile Hirsch and Jessica Biel and musicians Santigold and Kenna, the Ethiopia-born singer-songwriter leading the Summit on the Summit initiative.

March 04, 2010

Last summer, two telepresence-enabled research vessels hit the high seas. No, we’re not talking Star Trek—the E/V Nautilus and Okeanos Explorer use satellite communications to bring scientists across the globe aboard, virtually, in 20 minutes flat. The system, designed by National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Robert Ballard (who discovered the Titanic), allows the ships to roam year-round, 24/7, with the best pair of eyes at the helm. During initial trials the ships “made huge discoveries roughly every 11 hours,” says Ballard. “It was ridiculous.” Here’s how Ballard’s fleet works. Text by Peter Koch